Restaurante O Pescador — Restaurant in Praia da Vitória

Before getting into the details, the bullets are:

Overpriced. Wait staff hit or miss Seafood questionably prepared Mediocre food Shady billing practices

When we arrived we were told time and time again to wait to be seated. After 5 minutes we were lead to a mostly empty restaurant. I got a shrimp cocktail (€12) which was served at room temperature. The shrimp were not deveined properly and had bits of excrement near the tails. It was served with a light orange sauce (probably 1000 island) rather than a more traditional marina. When addressing this, they said the shrimp were boiled and cooled on ice, but after hundreds of shrimp cocktails, I have never had one that wasn’t properly chilled. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, I knew I should have sent them back.

When ordering the fish of the day, they neglected to inform me that it was €55 for a kilo. Needless to say we were shocked when the bill came showing €30 for a 550g redfish. When I mentioned the outrageous price, the server said she would comp the fish, which I countered with 50% off, as I had not checked with them either, we were both at fault. They brought another waitress to “sadly” inform us they could only do 20% off. We paid because we knew it was a pointless battle.

We have had meals at other azores restaurants for half the price that had twice the food and staff quality.

Needless to say we won’t be back and do not recommend coming here unless you enjoy being ripped off for mediocre food at best.

The owner responded to my review on TripAdvisor with a weak response to try and save face, saying I tried to get a free meal for two, when I clearly stated I offered to pay half for the fish, and not try to take the...

We had such high expectations of this place, given the recommendations and other reviews, but I must say we were disappointed. First we were seated in one of the many small rooms and waited exactly 25 mins between seeing a menu and placing an order, and that was the food order. We were told drinks have to be ordered after the food, ok. Their excuse - they had to bring out food that was already ordered to the other tables. We ordered a Fried Baby Calamari and a Fish/Seafood Cataplana for two plus a bottle of wine. Now their wine collection is impressive and they suggest that you browse around and pick whatever you like, which is a great idea but the place is packed wall-to-wall with tables and people that makes it impossible unless you want to bother the other diners. We picked a wine suggested by the server and it wasn’t very good (which is really hard to achieve anywhere in Portugal). The Calamari was good but the Cataplana was far from desired, they make it with a cream sauce that makes it an insult to the original version of Algarve Cataplana. I asked for a side plate of rice, twice, to somehow make it better but that never came?! My honest opinion is that this place was once very good but they expect to keep expanding and to have one server take care of too many (if not all the) tables and hence the dining experience suffers. Until that changes, I wouldn’t...

This restaurant has existed for approximately 30 years. It is the high standard for dining in Terceira, hands down. The purveyor of this establishment only excepts the best in quality of food, wine and service. I have witnessed this as a customer, he does not cut corners, ever. You will not find better service or dining and I truly believe you won’t leave disappointed as I have never. If you’re expecting the cost of a snack bar then go somewhere else, there are many choices and no shortage of bad service on the island. If you want to have a fulfilling dinner or lunch with quality and care this is it. Anywhere else on the island is a crapshoot. Other restaurants in the area are guaranteed to have long waits for dished to arrive to the table, poor service, and have food that is good by island standards of which the threshold is becoming lower and lower. As a foodie who spends a lot of time dining out on the island year after year after year I could only share the experience I have had and those of others I know. Sometimes just because a place is busy does not mean that it is good, I suggest that the reader trusts what they read over...